Crafts
Soap Making
Also Known As Saponification craft
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Turning fat and lye into soap by saponification, one of the oldest pieces of practical chemistry a household owns. Cold-process soap making, worked with oils, lye, molds and patience, is among the most popular of the revived domestic arts, and its chemistry is unchanged from the ancient recipe.
Facts
Earliest Evidence (Circa)The earliest recorded evidence of soap-like materials dates to circa 2800 BC in ancient Babylon 1 OriginThe earliest known written soap recipe is a Sumerian clay tablet from around 2500 BC, describing oil boiled with wood ash for washing woollen cloth; what it produced was a proto-soap rather than true soap in the later chemical sense, but the reaction it records is sometimes called the earliest recorded chemical reaction of any kind. 1 Sources
1. Soap (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundationen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap, History sectionQuote, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap, History section
A formula for making a soap-like substance was written on a Sumerian clay tablet around 2500 BC. This was produced by heating a mixture of oil and wood ash, the earliest recorded chemical reaction, and used for washing woolen clothing.
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